Category Archives: Books

Books, Current Affairs

Emma

I picked up this Jane Austen novel in a second hand booksale. I’d just caught part of Clueless on the telly – you know the movie with Alicia Silverstone – and it seemed like serendipity to then come across the book the story is based on.

So I read it. I last read the book when my orchid hunter was born. I went through a Jane Austen phase and read all of her novels and even a biography when the novels ran out. And of course I caught the movie.

It’s not my favourite JA novel but it is still quite charming. The English class system is thrown sharply into focus as Emma compares the various standings of the people around her as only one near the top of the pile can. The manners are charming too. It is hard to imagine calling someone Mr or Miss these days – unless they are a former teacher perhaps, and would anyone really be scandalised if you were to call someone by their first name?
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Hmmm well I do still cringe to remember how I addressed the then Prime Minister of Australia once… “Hi Paul” I (dare I say) gushed… well perhaps not gushed… but I was certainly somewhat casual. Hey I was young and probably overexcited.

So apart from Prime Ministers, and former teachers who probably still scare you a bit, and very old people – who else do you address with social title – why I spoke to the Administrator of Christmas Island just the other day (he’s like the governor) and he told me to call him Neil… can you think of anyone?

Books

A Spot of Bother

By Mark Haddon, author of bestseller The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.

A Spot of Bother is a story of ordinary people. George, in his sixties has retired, his wife, Jean is having an affair. Their daughter Katie is marrying someone they don’t particularly like and their son Jamie is homosexual, which they are having difficulty coming to terms with.

George has mental health problems which are manifesting. He is convinced a spot of eczema is cancer and that trips him out. Katie doesn’t know if she loves Rae or not, Jamie can’t tell his boyfriend he loves him. And Jean is wrestling with her conscious over the affair.

It’s a charming novel. A little sad. A little bit funny.
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What I love about Mark’s writing is that he gets inside the heads of his characters so well you feel what they do. You are there inside George’s head as he slowly goes up the wall and it feels like a true insight.

It’s not a hard read, perhaps not for kiddies if you’re concerned about sex scenes, but it is a thought provoking one.

And surprisingly, quite the page-turner.

Books

Dragon’s Fire

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By Anne and Todd McCaffrey.

Anne McCaffrey’s fantasy world of Pern is like comfort food to me. I love these stories. When 911 happened… we watched it live on the telly as the first pictures came in right after The Bill, a favourite in those days… I dug out my collection and read them all back-to-back.

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I’m not sure these measure quite up to the richness of the world created in the original series but I still enjoyed reading it and will look for the next one when it comes. Again, not challenging reading but my head is too full at the moment for anything but escapism to a world I’ve already been to.

Books

Kerry Greenwood’s Earthly Delights

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Look this is a light mystery romance set in gritty downtown Melbourne. The heroine is an overweight – some might prefer – curvy – baker, who is drawn into two mysteries… one within the apartment block in which she resides and another on the streets of Melbourne. This is actually what provides them an advantage over recommended purchase cheap cialis drugs. The latest research conducted by the group of medications calledselective inhibitors cialis 10 mg pamelaannschoolofdance.com of cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP)-specific phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5). Licorice root is the excellent blood purifier herbs that can help a woman naturally increase her sexual cialis cost appetite. It can regulate proper digestion, and the balance of beneficial intestinal flora, purchasing viagra online etc. The romance comes in with the tall, dark and handsome bouncer type who drives the soup van for the homeless.

It’s as I say, light, good fun, and a pleasant read. I’ve enjoyed her Phryne Fisher mysteries in the past which is set in the 1930s and I liked her more modern setting too. I even laughed out loud once or twice at her turn of phrase and I can’t say fairer than that.

Books, Hugamuga, TV

Who Killed Channel 9?

Just finished Gerald Stone’s book about the fall and fall of Channel 9. I suspect it has more resonance for eastern staters… in Perth Channel 7 is the powerhouse and Channel 9 well… doesn’t cut it. I can’t remember the last time they won the news ratings.

However it wasn’t that long ago that Channel 9 in Perth filled in their pool for cost cutting reasons and Kerry Packer was a colourful figure on the media landscape.

It was an interesting read and dealt with the period from 2002 to earlier this year. It was a bit of a hatchet job and I could hear the longing in Gerald’s tone for the Golden Age… as he continually referred to it. When money flowed and all that mattered was winning the ratings and being the best.

But I think the conclusion would have to be that in fact Kerry killed Channel 9, his beloved television station, through the management team he put in place at PBL. Seems a pity really.
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My son’s observation: “Channel 9 just seems to copy Channel 7.”

I must say it’s not often that I watch the commercials unless I’ve recorded the program on my PVR first so I can flick the ads.

In other news. My boy’s football team won their first game of the season today against one of the better sides. How does the team song go now?

Books, Ireland, Random, Travel

Luck of the Irish

I’ve recently read a Maeve Binchy novel (Whitethorn Woods). Yes I did. Yes I know it is not challenging literature. But it is lovely escapism.

Ireland 064

Maeve Binchy’s novels are full of Irish romance, where everything goes wrong and then there you are! Everything works out and the lovers finally get together… and we all sit back and go well, escapism fiction what do you expect.

Except.

Except, when we were in Ireland (photos here), we met a couple who could have come straight from a Maeve Binchy novel. It’s true. And I didn’t realise it until I read another Maeve the other week.

We went to a pub in Ballina one night…we were staying in the very swish Mt Falcon Hotel… and we thought we’d experience “an authentic village Irish pub”. So we went to this bar and feeling a little self conscious headed upstairs to balcony table which overlooked the main bar. There was another bar upstairs so we were close to drinks…

Anyway we started playing Brag to fill the spaces in our conversation and this Irish chap started chatting to us and wanted to be dealt in. He was with his sister and brother-in-law. Now it’s been a little while since this conversation so I’m going on my gut remembering what was said but the sister told me how she met her bloke.

She’s from a family of five or six and she had been seeing this fellow and they’d booked a scuba diving weekend away together to learn how to scuba dive but they broke up. Devastated she decided she needed to get away anyway and she went on the holiday alone.

Day one she turns up at this diving centre and signs up and she meets this fellow. She wasn’t very nice to him as I remember… but that evening as she’s dining alone she sees him again and he joins her table. She tells him the whole sorry story. Turns out he’s the diving instructor and at the end of the weekend they’ve fallen in love.

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Anyway they are together and the brother is a bit of tear-away and wanted to go into business with them but they decided not to do it.

Does this not sound like a Maeve Binchy novel plot to you?!!!

Oh that’s right. You haven’t read Maeve Binchy.

It is JUST LIKE a Maeve Binchy novel.

And then! And then the brother-in-law/dive instructor/squillionaire tells us his accountant used to be Ken Crew.

Yes. The guy that died of a shark attack off Cottesloe Beach.

How amazing is that for a coincidence!

It was like WE were in a Maeve Binchy novel, and the funny thing was, until I read that Whitethorn Woods book the other day I didn’t even realise it…

Books

Dirt Music

I have just finished Dirt Music by Tim Winton.

I went off Tim’s work… Cloudstreet was okay but The Riders was awful and since then I just couldn’t bear to go back but then a person whom I respect said that if I didn’t like Tim’s work, Dirt Music was the one I’d most likely like… so when I saw it on the “yet to be put back on the shelves” trolley at the library* I thought I’d give it a go.

It still took me about a month to pick it up… I had Robin Hobb and JK to read first, not to mention Philippa Gregory and Maeve Binchy (okay okay but I needed to escape)… but eventually I started reading.

And you know what?
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I liked it. It was good. I felt the adjectives were a little too frequent in the opening chapters, a little pretentious, but either they weren’t, or I got used to them. I really enjoyed it. Yes and even gasped out loud at the end.

Everyone else has read it so I don’t feel the need to ramble on about the plot but yes, I will pick up this West Australian author again. Tim, you have redeemed yourself!

* I always scour the returns trolley. I love to see what others have been reading and I’ve discovered some new authors which I would never have found on the shelves… I recommend this practice to the regular library visitor as a short cut to new authors. Otherwise I just browse my faves on the shelves…

Books, Work

Back to work

Going back to work has certainly slowed my reading of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows but I have finished it, and therefore the series at last.

I found it to be pretty good.  Better than 5.  As good as 6.  A nice rounding off of the series.

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Going back to work felt rather flat.  I guess I was hoping that the old enthusiasm would blast away my uncertainties.  Well it looks as if interviews are at least 5 weeks away so I’m not going to stress yet.  Last minute Larissa.  That’s me!

Books, Family, Shopping

Reading Harry Potter

Harry Potter

A very exciting day yesterday as we buy the latest Harry Potter book. The deal is What is supposed to be done in such a situation? Do you drop the TV set, breaking it, and launch a front kick? Do you ask the fellow to put it down for a second, pretending you are tired or need to http://frankkrauseautomotive.com/testimonial/honest-friendly-very-easy-purchase/ buy viagra online regrip it, and then scream for help? After all, the thief has broken into your house. Then it demands to levitra 40 mg http://frankkrauseautomotive.com/cars-for-sale/2004-toyota-camry-le-2/ urinate, thus frequent urination occurs. Some patients should also not take viagra soft tabs it because of their medicines. Sexual problem and complication are much in active which are resulting in Divorce and depression in an individual’s personality traits. buy female viagra Junior Poshi can read it first, but then I get to read it before she re-reads it. She finished the book at 2.30am last night. Bless.

Books, Family, Modern Life

Sunday evening

What was it that Douglas Adams wrote about Sunday Afternoons…

In the end, it was Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55 when you know you’ve taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.

See that sort of Sunday Afternoon is what you get when you sleep in til 10am and go out for lunch with an old neighbour who has moved to Islamabad and then pick up your daughter who has spent the weekend at a friend’s making and selling cookies.  You pick up some dvds so the kids don’t get too bored while you’re at work and burn the house down and it’s raining so you curl up and watch Cheaper By The Dozen 2 which is as bad as the first one but less funny and you still haven’t picked up the clothes on your bedroom floor, folded the washing or cleaned any part of the house.

So instead you check your emails and then find that you have a couple of comments on your blog that you weren’t notified about and you flick through your favourite blogs and find out that one friend has crashed his car and another has made a difficult decision regarding her health and another blogger has written a dissertation on the theory of blog karma and you’re not quite sure how your karma is going…

And your dad has dropped off a pile of whiting fillets but you’re not sure you can be bothered cooking fish for tea, and you still haven’t written your CV, and your son is still coughing though thankfully is much better, and you have a slight ache in the back of your neck and know you really should go and do some exercise or maybe even clean the pool as it is greener than the lawn but hey, it’s dark out so you don’t.
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And you’re thinking about a fellow you saw at a party last night who goes by the name of a small furry marsupial only found on Rottnest Island who you met in 1992 in Broome and who went out briefly with a good friend of yours and is now into emergency medicine and the uni crowd who were there too who you see maybe once or twice a year but only for the last three or four years and how weird it was to have found contact with them after all this time…

You’re too tired even to read another chapter of Robin Hobb’s latest novel Renegade’s Magic, which really is rather good and you really should start being a good mother again and get started on dinner and anyway who is going to read a blog post this long! So enough about me, what do you think of my new banners? Sure they are not the proper art I’ve featured before but I kind of like some of them.

And I hope your Sunday was lovely… xx